Pretty Goes with Pretty

My Listening Year: The Best of 2007 (New Release Edition)

1. Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha [mp3: "Fiery Crash"]
Other albums released this year might have been more ambitious, more audacious, more immediate, more dramatic. But the simple fact is this: no other album occupied my time more than this one. It's musically and lyrically sophisticated, not without humor or irony but never self-conscious either. And it's the best kind of album, where every single song, at one point or another, is your favorite.
Previously: my review of the album

2. Peter Bjorn & John, Writer's Block [mp3: "Paris 2004"]
I never got obsessively into Writer's Block the way I did with Armchair Apochrypha, but like a faithful dog, this album has never been far from my iPod. There ain't a single bad song here, and best of all there is a lot that is different from "Young Folks," lest you form your opinion based on that one overplayed track. (I gave you "Paris 2004" here; I love the unexpected timing of the chorus.) I played the hell out of Writer's Block for the first part of the year, and I've consistently returned to it after the honeymoon, still loving each and every track from first to last.

3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga [mp3: "Eddie's Ragga"]
Easily the best-produced album this year. I knew I liked this album for its songs, but once I started listening to it on headphones and started noticing all the little details, it got even better. Radiohead could take a few lessons from Spoon in terms of using the studio as an instrument. As if everything else Spoon does, they know when to use it and when not to use it. "Eddie's Ragga" is a good example: listen to it on headphones and hone in on that guitar. It's basically one chord for the entire song but the sound of the subtly guitar changes throughout.

4. Jens Lekman, Night Falls Over Kortedala [mp3: "Shirin"]
Easily three or four of my favorite songs of the year are courtesy Night Falls Over Kortedala. The album drags a little in the middle—one too many songs with that syrupy layer of strings—but as time goes on even the songs I liked less on first listens have been growing on me. I can tell that I'm not done with this album yet.

5. Radiohead, In Rainbows
Last week I mentioned that after listening to In Rainbows, I stopped abruptly and haven't felt the need to go back. That's still true, but in anticipation of this post I did put it on once more, and darn it but I can't deny that it's a cohesive, well-thought-out, engaging album. My feelings on my personal relationship to Radiohead aside, this is an album with few faults.
Previously: my review of the album; Radiohead teams up with the Eagles to fuck record stores; and of course, "All I Need" rendered as lolcats.

6. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
This album is getting a lot of love right now, showing up at or near the top of many other best-of-the-year lists. For me, seven of this album's nine tracks are fantastic, which is enough to get it on my list; I just wish it didn't totally crap out on the last two.
Previously: my thoughts on "Us v. Them"

7. New Pornographers, Challengers
I got into the New Pornographers late, and hence picked up their other three albums all at once. I wound up processing all those albums as one large body of work. Challengers, therefore, is the first New Pornographers effort I've taken on its own terms. That might be why I appreciated this album's layers more than others did. I'm not sure what I would have thought if the band had done Electric Version 2.0—would I have embraced a dozen more super-charged anthems or would I have felt like they were spinning their wheels? Who knows. The bottom line is that Challengers is different, but not too different. I appreciate that. I've said this before, but: I never would have thought my favorite tracks on a NP album would be the slow songs, but that's what happened. For an album I'd been anticipating all year, Challengers somehow managed to be a pleasant surprise.

8. Feist, The Reminder
Heading into 2007, this was my most-anticipated album. So of course it disappointed a little. And by now I'm all Feisted out for a while, what with the ubiquity of "1234" making discussion of Feist too polarizing to be interesting (come on, just listen to this music—there's nothing polarizing about it; you either love it or you're ambivalent about it). At any rate, The Reminder succeeded for me as a collection of ten or twelve great Feist songs, though it failed as an album. It didn't quite cohere, though most of these songs will continue to pop up on various iTunes playlists, guaranteeing consistent rotation around this house.
Previously: my review of the album; my suggested resequencing of the track list; and my post on "Adult Alternative"

Albums of My Life

Last week I referred to Paul Simon’s Graceland as an “album of my life.” Coincidentally, this thread at Last Plane to Jakarta took a brief tangent into what constitutes a “life-changing album.” Two different concepts, and I’ve had both on my mind in the last few days. The first is a lot easier to find examples of: albums that I played intensely during some period of my life, to the point of becoming something other than good or great albums; rather, they're the soundtrack to memories. The second category, life-changing albums, is harder to figure out. Before I try to sort that one out, I want to think about the other.

Albums of my life. Going back as far as I can, my childhood was filled with Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, Ry Cooder. I have strong mental associations with all those artists, and in retrospect they all must have set some kind of foundation for what I’ve come to like today.

George Michael’s Faith might have been the very first album I ever viewed as wholly mine: an cassette I kept in my own room, played on my own walkman. INXS’s Kick and Run-DMC’s Raising Hell, too. In elementary school I would walk laps around the track during recess with Danny Casares as we tried to piece together the lyrics to “You Be Illin’ from memory. By sixth grade I was transfixed by Appetite for Destruction—probably the first album I’d ever associated with danger. This led to junior high and high school, where Master of Puppets, Rust in Peace, and Persistence of Time set the template for my taste in metal. By my junior or senior year I was transitioning out of metal and into something else: Rollins Band (particularly the early stuff), Tool, and a band I’d discovered through a blind purchase at Tower Records, Craw, all made music that was heavy but was more dynamic musically and more sophisticated lyrically and emotionally.

Somehow from there I stumbled into indie rock without any real guidance (which I’ve written about before). By then I’d lost interest in heaviness but was actively looking for music that shifted dynamically. Slint, Fugazi, Rodan, Codeine. I vividly recall moving to college and trying to describe the kind of music I liked to a kid I’d met in the dorms. “It can be really loud and really screamy, but it can also get really quiet, and it’s not heavy like metal.” He just looked at me and said “what, you mean emo?”

Another dormmate gave me a dubbed cassette full of songs by what I thought was some friend of hers; the recording quality was exceptionally poor and all the label said was “Elliott Smith.” I played the hell out of the tape but was embarrassed to tell the girl I dug it so much because it seemed a little weird to be really into her random friend’s music. Six months later I was in a record store and saw the album in the bin—a real record by a real guy on a real label, and best of all that was another album (Roman Candle) in the bins as well!

The rest of college was Tortoise, June of 44, Blonde Redhead, Unwound, Superchunk, the Pernice Brothers. After college, when I met my wife: My Morning Jacket’s The Tennessee Fire, Cat Power’s Moon Pix, Rufus Wainwright’s first album, Ryan Adams’s Heartbreaker.

We got married in September 2001: she walked down the aisle to Sigur Ros’ “Sven-g-Englar” and we danced to Low’s “Two Step.” We moved to New York not long after. If you asked me to soundtrack the winter of 2002, when we lived in a spacious but empty loft above a functioning sweatshop in a shitty part of Williamsburg, I’d have to hand you Pete Yorn’s Music for the Morning After. When we moved to Boerum Hill it was Chutes too Narrow, Michigan, and Radio Dept.’s Lesser Matters. We bought Feist’s Let it Die in Paris in 2004. We moved to L.A. in 2005 and in the last two or three years it’s been Funeral, Antonio Carlos Jobim & Elis Regina, Midlake, and most recently Andrew Bird.

These are albums of my life. And really I’m just scratching the surface—this is what I can come up with just thinking about it in the time it takes to write these words. Were I to focus on one period of my life, other albums would come into view, sort of like staring at the night sky and seeing the stars reveal themselves the longer you look.

But not all of these albums are my all-time favorites, necessarily. Some I haven’t listened to in years, either because my tastes have changed drastically (everything pre-Spiderland), because I associate them too strongly with my memories (Moon Pix), because they’ve just not aged well (sadly, Spiderland), or because they’re frankly not that good (Music for the Morning After).

Thus we come to the difference between an album of my life and an album that changed my life. More on that later this week.

My Listening Hours: The Best of 2007 So Far

My top ten of the year is, so far, just a top six. But in my book that means 2007 has been a pretty fantastic year for new music. Thus far, only my #1 pick seems unassailable; the remaining albums are all still jockeying for final position; I reccomend them all equally.

I won't bore you with more longwinded posts. Today, just a list, an mp3, and links to things I've said previously. Check back tomorrow for a look at what's still to come before 2007 is over.

1. Andrew Bird, Armchair Apochrypha. [mp3: "Heretics"]
See also my album review, or this post, which includes an mp3 of "Scythian Empires"

2. New Pornographers, Challengers. [mp3: "All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth"]
See also the post from earlier this week, which includes an mp3 of "Challengers"

3. Peter Bjorn & John, Writer's Block. [mp3: "Lets Call it Off"]
See also this post, about accessibility vs. experimentation, which includes an mp3 of "Roll the Credits"

4. Feist, The Reminder. [mp3: "So Sorry"]
See also my album review, my suggested resequencing of the album, and this post on "Adult Alternative," which includes an mp3 of "Brandy Alexander"

5. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. [mp3: "Don't Make Me a Target"]
See also the post from earlier this week, which includes an mp3 of "The Ghost of You Lingers"

6. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver. [mp3: "Us v Them"]
Sorry, I got nothin'.

And you? What's your best of the year so far?

My Listening Hours: The State of 2007 So Far

No, the albums here are not my tops of the year; they're just what I have to choose from. These are the nine albums made in 2007 that I've so far purchased or acquired, and/or completely processed as albums.

If I were pressed to make a top ten list, I'd stall at four. Here's my ranking:

1. Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha
This one leads the pack, easily, as the most rewarding album of the year.

2. Peter Bjorn & John, Writer's Block
This album has remained in my iPod for a surprisingly long time. When I got a little burned on the record as a whole, the songs kept popping up on random plays and I never skipped 'em. Lately I've come back around to playing the record straight through again and I'm reminded of how layered and thought-out the album  is.

3. Feist, The Reminder
For now this occupies the number three spot. By the end of the year there's a good chance it will still be in the top ten, but I don't know how high. I'm just beginning to burn out the record and am ready to put it aside for awhile. The question by the end of the year will be whether it ever makes its way back into my rotation. Sometimes albums have a way of surprising you the second time around and all the nagging feelings you had just evaporate.

4. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
As I said earlier this week, this is an album that I'm only now realizing is better than I first gave it credit for. As with Feist I don't really know how I'll feel about six months from now. I don't really know how I'll feel about it six weeks from now! Sometimes I embrace the record, sometimes I'm exhausted by it.

The rest? None are truly bad but none are essential, either. The Sea & Cake committs the worst sin - it's boring. While the Shins, Arcade Fire, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah all have their strong points but honestly I haven't consciously chosen to put them on since the last time I wrote about them - a good three months ago.

There are a few albums out now that I still intend to pick up--Battles and Rufus Wainwright, in particular. What about you? What's on your best-so-far list? Have I missed anything totally worthwhile? There was a lot of buzz around Panda Bear and the National, among others, in the last few months. Did you pick them up? Have they remained in your rotation? What has occupied your listening hours? Let me know in the comments.

Meanwhile I'll be looking ahead to the next three months of releases for albums I'm looking forward to. Check back here later today.

My Listening Hours: The Best of April–June

Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha
Earlier this year I did a couple of posts concerning my pet peeve about most mp3 blogs. It generated a little discussion and I think brought a lot of new readers here. I still stand by all I said—basically that most mp3 blogs spend too much time hyping, not enough time talking about music—but on the other hand, you've got Andrew Bird's latest album. I absolutely would not have picked up this album if it weren't for the mp3 blogs. Bird has been on my radar for a while but I've just never had the incentive to pick up one of his many records. Then "Heretics" started showing up on every last blog I read and that was the end of it. So, chalk one up for the mp3 bloggers: this is my favorite record of the year by a mile.

I wrote a pretty lengthy review of the album not long after I picked it up (where I too included "Heretics," if you're interested). I won't go on about it again, other than to reiterate that Armchair Apocrypha is the best kind of album: it's a grower. My review went on about that facet but here I am two months later and it is still growing on me. I've declared about eight or nine of the twelve tracks to be my absolute very favoritest in that span of time—curently it's "Scythian Empires."

Feist, The Reminder
Maybe it seems a little funny that I'd chalk this one up as one of my favorites, given my nit-picky review, my suggested re-sequencing, and my malaise concerning the very idea of something called Adult Alternative, but the fact is I've devoted so many posts to this record because I've devoted so many listening hours to it.

Of all the albums slated to come out this year, this was the one that I had probably highest expectactions for—higher than the Shins, higher than Arcade Fire, higher than the New Pornographers, higher than everything. So to that end it is, yes, a little disappointing. But it's worst fault is really that it is merely great rather than perfect. I'm to a point now where I think I've finally played it too many times—maybe. I'm tired of many of the more upbeat songs; but now some of the quieter tracks are beginning to reveal themselves to me, in particular "So Sorry," "Honey Honey," and "The Park." It just goes to show that I was right in my first impression that this is a record full of individually strong songs, even if the album as a whole still doesn't quite cohere for me.

Joni Mitchell, Court and Spark
I was a Joni Mitchell virgin. I thought I knew what to expect—that voice, going up high when you kinda wish she wouldn't, at least not so often. And yes, she does that. And yes, she squeezes lyrics in where the meter shouldn't allow it. And no, it doesn't always work. But I'll tell you, I really wasn't prepared for Mitchell's excellent guitar skills. She takes her playing to Nick Drake levels—beyond mere folkiness and into true, subtle musicianship. Not to mention the harmonies, the lyrics (some feel dated, others still sharp). It doesn't always work—some of the later songs get a little too loose, a little too jazzy—but when this album is on, as in the case of "Help Me" or "Free Man in Paris," wow, it's on.

LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
I bought this album back in April and, like their last album, I enjoyed some of the songs but not all. It felt weirdly not for me—I don't dance, I don't work out, I don't really do anything that is best-suited to repetitive booty-shakin' beats. Not to mention another part of me wondered: if I'm going to own a dance record, should it be this one? This seems kid tested and hipster approved—in other words, a little fakey.

But I kept listening to it, mostly on random amongst numerous other albums and rarely straight through—a task I found a little too overwhelming. And while some songs have by now died painful deaths as far as my hard drive goes—the title track and the unfortunate "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down"—the rest of the album has burrowed its way in. The opener is brilliant, and it took me about a month of listening before I realized that three of my favorite songs were actually all parts of the same track, "Us v Them" (I blame my slowness on the fact that all this record's repetition begs you to zone out while you're jamming to it). All the way up until this weekend, as I prepared to write this series of posts, I was expecting to put this album in with the "the rest" (come back tomorrow for those), but on one more casual listen as I sat on the 405, I realized that I have a helluva lot more fun with this album than I ever gave it credit for.

Just Gimme Indie Wha??

Richard Crary pointed me to Charlie Wilmoth’s review of The Reminder over at Dusted, which begins to raise some of the issues I’ve touched on here and in some comments at the Existence Machine. Wilmoth doesn’t so much review Feist’s album as he does use it to talk about some other issues—namely the disappearance of lo-fi recording in indie rock. Gone are the days of Sebadoh and Beat Happening, where whole albums were made from 4-tracks because that’s all these people could afford. These days, if anyone is making an album with that equipment, it’s an aesthetic choice, not a necessity.

Wilmoth’s observation is a good one, though it might have packed more punch in the context of Elliott Smith’s newest, since Smith is arguably the last significant artist to squeeze genius out of a 4-track (and subsequently lose some of his genius once he had every trick at his disposal). I’m not sure why Wilmoth would choose a major-label release by an artist who has never claimed to have roots in lo-fi (in fact Wilmoth admits this slight absurdity his review). His ultimate complaint seems to be that Feist used her major label–quality recording equipment to make a record that is not very challenging—whereas if she were limited by budget and technology, it might have pushed her to make something more visceral. I can’t ride that train all the way to Wilmoth’s destination, however. His wish for Feist to be “more amateur” is ridiculous given that she’s done nothing with her career other than prove that she’s far from amateur—she’s versatile and commanding, both on record and on stage, solo or in support of others.

But Wilmoth’s observation concerning The Reminder’s many smooth corners, and his discomfort with that as he tries to place Feist within a Pitchfork (or Dusted)-approved context, points to a similar idea I’ve been circling for a while now—namely that Feist is trading in what Wilmoth dubs “Adult Alternative.” He writes:

The less obvious effect that technology is having on indie rock is that the punk spirit of so much ’80s and ’90s indie is just about gone from many of the biggest records. You can now buy the Shins’ latest album at Starbucks. And when I hear the Shins, or Death Cab for Cutie, I mostly hear a very beautiful-sounding brand of bougie, thirtysomething myopia. Even when the Shins’ lyrics drip with bitterness, and even when Ben Gibbard sings about his estrangement from the church, the underlying message is that everything is okay, or at least that everything is okay beyond the world of the narrators' personal lives. Their music is perfect, professional, and Starbucks-friendly. As much as I enjoy many aspects of both bands’ music, there is something wrong with this picture.

It may seem absurd to mention Sebadoh’s III in the context of a review of a record like The Reminder, which was released on a major label and features an opener (“So Sorry”) that could easily be mistaken for Norah Jones. And, after all, Leslie Feist has received a huge career boost from NPR. So why not just acknowledge that it’s Adult Alternative fodder and let it be?

Again, I’m not so sure the onset of Adult Alternative is the fault of technology, but nevertheless there does seem to be such a genre, one that didn’t exist five or six years ago but which has quietly come into existence on any thirtysomething indie rocker’s iPod. Feist is far from the only one to occupy this territory. The newest Sea & Cake record, for instance, is so free of rough edges it’s practically dust. KCRW’s celebrated music programming is filled to the gills with underground soft rock. Even my beloved Midlake has garnered their fair share of comparisons to America.

Have we been snookered? How can I read Pitchfork every morning and enjoy an album so palatable my mother-in-law might even like it? How can Pitchfork swoon over that album with an 8.8 rating?

Since Wilmoth uses Sebadoh as his foil to Feist, let’s travel back in time, to the days when indie rock was so fucking new Lou Barlow hadn’t even written a song about it yet. Sebadoh’s first album, The Freed Man, was released in 1989. That same year the Who infamously embarked on their 25th anniversary reunion tour. “What happened to ‘Hope I Die Before I Get Old’?” the baby boomers lamented—not so much because they didn’t want to rock out with their spouses and children to “Pinball Wizard”; they just realized that, like 3/4 of the Who, they did not die before they got old. The irony that the anti-establishment g-g-generation had become the establishment had officially dawned. It’s okay that the spirit of the song no longer makes sense; I just want to hear that song again.

Around the same time, boomers were upgrading their music collections from vinyl to the relatively newfangled format, the CD. They headed to their local Tower with the intention of buying Exile on Main Street, but they came out with the new James Taylor, too. Worse, they didn’t even bother re-buying any Kinks albums; they bought Kenny G instead.

Fast forward to present day. Now that indie rock itself is as old as the Who were in 1989, it is perhaps not surprising that there is such a thing as indie rock for parents—that same combination of mellowing contemporary tastes and a nostalgia for bygone rockers. Even Lou Barlow is in on it: Dinosaur Jr.’s back together. It’s the same disconnect found in our parents' record collections.

Which brings me back around to Feist and Adult Alternative. We’ve been listening to punk, alternative, indie, underground—whatever you want to call it, not mainstream—pretty much our entire lives. Why, now that we are married and are having kids, would we suddenly abandon our innate distrust of mainstream music, even if our tastes are, perhaps inevitably, mellowing? Fuck no I’m not going to buy today’s popular equivalent to Kenny G—but I’m considering buying the new Air. How’s that for a middle finger to the mainstream? Just gimme indie dinner music!

The ultimate question, finally, is this: so what? Wilmoth is onto something when he alludes to a sort of discomfort in acknowledging that the easiness of Feist’s sound is precisely what makes her records so beguiling, all the while reconciling that with your inner teenager, who would sooner punch his head through a wall than sing along with “Brandy Alexander.” But overcoming one’s inner college rock snob is a personal battle. I’m waging mine. How’s yours going?

Further on the Flawed Feist

Apropo of my quibble with The Reminder, I've presumptuously re-jiggered the tracklisting to my own liking. Though the album is still not quite perfect—there's no getting around the fact that eight of the thirteen tracks are ballads—I think the record is not quite as muddled this way. Give this a try and tell me what you think.

1. 1234
2. I Feel it All
3. Honey Honey
4. The Water
5. My Moon My Man
6. So Sorry
7. The Limit to Your Love
8. Sea Lion Woman
9. The Park
10. Brandy Alexander
11. Past in Present
12. How My Heart Behaves
13. Intuition

Feist: The Reminder

My wife and I were first exposed to Feist in 2004 through her two guest spots on the Kings of Convenience album Riot on an Empty Street. We had no idea who she was but we fell in love with her voice. A little research led us to Let it Die, which was at the time available only in Europe. Lucky for us—here’s something you can’t often say—we happened to be going to Europe that month. So we bought it in Paris.

Associating Feist with that trip to Paris, as well as with our final year in New York, makes for a certain sentimental attachment. But sentimentalism aside, Let it Die deserved all those spins. It has become one of those albums that has remained in steady rotation for years, not months or weeks.

My anticipation, you might imagine, has been pretty high for The Reminder. Particularly because Let it Die, in fact, was not a perfect album. “Inside and Out,” “Leisure Suite,” and especially “One Evening” veered too far into adult contemporary territory. These were the only songs in my collection I could describe as “silky.” But all indications from the press I’d read at the time was that Let it Die’s popularity was something of a fluke, that Feist did not really intend to “compose” a real record (hence so many covers). She promised the next album would be closer to her originals, closer to “the good songs.” As far as I was concerned there was a high chance for perfection the second time around.

So now The Reminder is upon us, and pretty much every review I’ve read seems to make that claim. The hyperbole is nearly unanimous—which brings me to an awkward position. I like this record. I wanted to like this record and I do like this record. Nearly song for song, The Reminder is better than Let it Die. The album will very likely remain in rotation for much of the year and will probably show up in my year-end top ten list.

Yet I can’t be hyperbolic. I have a nit, and I must pick.

I’ve read grumblings here and there that if The Reminder is flawed, it is because there are too many slow songs and not enough upbeat songs. That might be true—I wouldn’t object to one more track as joyful as “1234” or “I Feel it All”—but on the other hand there are no bad songs. I think a more precise criticism is to note how frequently The Reminder kills its own momentum. The album is sequenced really curiously, to its detriment.

The album kicks off with “So Sorry,” a mild, folky ballad similar in mood to Let it Die’s opener, “Gatekeeper.” It’s a nice song, but it’s also the most modest of the dozen tracks. Meanwhile “1234,” which both lyrically and musically seems like such an obvious opener, is buried in the last third of the album, long after its buoyancy can really save the record’s pacing.

“So Sorry” almost feels like a false start—oops, meant to begin with the upbeat twosome “I Feel it All” and “My Moon My Man.” Okay then! Now we’re cookin’! Except, we’re not. Much of the album is a weird collection of couples; the two peppy tracks are followed by a pair of morose songwriter’s songs—lots of verses, not a lot else—“The Park” and “The Water.” The songs are very similar, and they add up to about ten minutes of downtime that kills all the wonder of the previous songs. The energy comes back with “Sea Lion Woman” and “Past in Present,” yet this is a curious pair too: higher energy, yes, but it feels like Feist’s genre-skipping interlude—the first has the feel of an indie rock tent revival; the second is the sole country-influenced track. Halfway through The Reminder, none of the songs feel comfortable within the skin of the album. “1234” tries to turn things into a party, but it’s surrounded by so many downers that there’s really no hope of saving the momentum.

Yet every song is good! And that’s what makes this a strange album. Even though they chop the album off at the knees, both “The Water” and “The Park” are fantastic songs. Even though the pairing of “Sea Lion Woman” and “Past in Present” belies a certain self-consciousness, taken individually they’re both a lot of fun. And despite reaching a certain level of exhaustion and frustration two-thirds in, the final quartet of songs are some of Feist’s best.

It is the quality of each individual song that keeps me coming back to The Reminder. I was hoping that the logic of the album would reveal itself to me the more I listened to it, in the manner that Andrew Bird’s latest did. But countless listens in, I’m still frustrated. I've been hesitant to even post about this album because I know that this single irritation, on paper, seems to outweigh my pleasure, which isn't the case. If I were rating it on the Pitchfork scale I'd probably put this in the high 7s to mid-8s. I recommend all thirteen of the great songs on The Reminder, even if I can't really recommend The Reminder.

Feist: My Moon My Man & 1 2 3 4

Wow, the New York Times sure did dote on Feist yesterday, didn't they? Fine by me; any success Feist finds is well deserved. I've heard two songs from her new album, The Reminder, so far. Both are great, and the videos are a joy, too. Here y'are, if you haven't seen them yet:

My Moon My Man

1 2 3 4

[Update: Centripetal Notion has audio for a third song, "I Feel it All."]

My Listening Hours: Looking Forward

The last few posts (here, here, here) have been concerned with January–March, but there’s a lot to look forward to in the coming months—just have a look at this list. Here are some thoughts on a few of them.

Blonde Redhead: 23 (4/10)
I’ve managed to own every Blonde Redhead album ever produced, while at the same time not really caring about them since Fake Can Be Just as Good. How that has happened, I’m not sure. That’s not to say I haven’t liked the albums that have come after them. If nothing else the band has grown into their own sound over the years and have remained interesting—so sue me if I liked them better when they were a cross between Sonic Youth and Unwound! Did I hear right that one of the brothers is no longer in the band? I remain curious.

Feist: The Reminder (5/1)
Of everything on the horizon, my hopes are highest for this album. My wife and I bought Let it Die while we were on vacation in Paris in 2004 and it has been on steady rotation in our house ever since. That album had its share of songs that crossed way over the line into Adult Contemporary, which has never really sat well with me. But Feist has redeemed herself on those counts for two reasons: first, she said in print that she sort of cobbled together this album, including a few “cheeky” moments, and she had no intention of or idea that it would blow up the way it did. Supposedly the new stuff is more like the good parts of Let it Die (you know which parts those are); second, in her not-to-be-missed fantastic wonderful live shows, she those same awful songs are the highlight of the concerts thanks to the way she reworked them. I have tremendous respect for her songwriting abilities so she better not let me down. Or else!

Bjork: Volta (5/8)
Talk about tremendous respect for songwriting ability. There’s no one that applies to more than Bjork. I wasn’t too fond of her last, Medulla, from the standpoint of wanting an enjoyable listening experience. But I have great respect and appreciation for what she set out to do. And the new one includes collaborations with Timbaland and Lightning Bolt? I wish it was all on the same song.

Mice Parade: s/t (5/8)
Elliott Smith: New Moon (2xCD rarities) (5/8)
Sea & Cake: Everybody (5/8)
Tarwater: Spider Smile (5/8)
Remind me on May 8th to great drunk and wax nostalgic for my senior year of college. If you’re wondering what I was listening to in 1999, this is a pretty good summary. I don’t know if I’ll actually purchase any of these records when they come out, but I will be paying attention to how they’re received and will check the mp3s as they come. If any of them represent a drastic creative resurgence, you’ll see me at Amoeba plunking down some bills.

Keren Ann: s/t (5/8)
I enjoyed most of Nolita, though it got a little somnambulant after a while. Has she grown?

Rufus Wainwright: Release the Stars (5/15)
Some time after Poses came out I had decided that I probably didn’t really need much more Rufus in my life. He does sort of sing the same melody all the time. In a state of supreme ambivalence I listened to Want One in a Virgin Megastore while waiting to meet up with my wife—and I had a conniption right then and there because “Oh What a World” was so wonderful. The whole of Want One, for me, still stands has Wainwright’s creative peak. Want Two, its companion, is his depth. There are some good songs there but that album just did not take. So I find myself back where I was in 2004, ambivalent. Will he surprise me again?

Battles: Mirrored (5/15)
I left the overly complicated mathy shit behind a long time ago, but Battles somehow strikes the right chord. I haven’t liked everything by then—sometimes it’s too techy for me—but their new song and video are great, so I’m getting stoked on this one.

Dungen: Tio Bitar (5/15)
Ta det Lugnt, surprise to me, really got a hold of me. In terms of my own reaction to them (not necessarily their own ability), it might have been a lightning-in-a-bottle moment, but I’ll be curious to hear this.

Wilco: Sky Blue Sky (5/15)
Word is Wilco has retreated from the more abstract direction they were headed on Ghost is Born. I have mixed feelings about that. Ghost is Born really didn’t sit well with me when it first came out but after seeing them on Austin City Limits I went back to it and it really started to grow on me (though it’s still not my favorite). Nels Cline’s guitarwork is just stupendous. But on the other hand they are apparently going back to a more rootsy sound, something closer to their first couple records. Summerteeth remains my favorite Wilco album, so if they could get in that vicinity again I sure wouldn’t complain.

Interpol: tba (6/5)
These guys are going to have to get really interesting for me to give two shits.

Shellac: Excellent Italian Greyhound (6/5)
I’m not a rabid Shellac fan—in fact I think I’ve never heard 1,000 Hurts—but I have a soft spot for At Action Park and the early 7”s, plus I used to really get off on the ten-minute opener to Terraform (but not so much the rest of the album—I was like the Bizarro Shellac Fan that year). I went through a phase from about ’98–’05 where loud records just didn’t do much for me. I’m out of that phase now, so perhaps I should return to Shellac.

Spoon: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (7/10)
These guys deliver every time. I’m looking forward to this the same way I’m looking forward to the next Spider-Man movie: I know what to expect, and I expect to enjoy it.

Tegan & Sara: The Con (7/24)
Who ever would have thought I’d be looking forward to a couple lesbians and an acoustic guitar? Yet here I am. I absolutely loathe everything I’ve heard by T&S that came before 2006’s So Jealous. But that album, even with all its whiny self-esteem issues, is inescapably tuneful.

New Pornographers: Challengers (late August)
“It is maybe slightly more epic,” says Carl Newman. I was late to the NP train and am currently in mad love with all three of their albums simultaneously. I’m in a sort of blind-love mode where I think that as long as it’s a new New Pornographers album, I’m going to think it’s brilliant. You’ll likely have to take everything I say with a grain of salt.